2 great ways to learn! free videos read our guides • watch the videos
Follow all our workshops with images and Video
Volume 2
222 pages Revised & updated for 2014
FREE NIKON VIDEO GUIDES!
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Learn how to master your Nikon D-SLR
minutes of video guides to using Nikon’s editing software
PMZ41
2014
INTRODUCTION CAMERA SKILLS NIKOPEDIA NIKON SOFTWARE ESSENTIAL KIT
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ikon has made many of the best SLR cameras that money can buy for well over 50 years. Today, Nikon makes great digital SLR cameras to suit every budget – to cater for the first-time buyer to the seasoned pro alike. Any one of these is capable of producing incredible pictures, and each is backed up by an arsenal of interchangeable lenses and bolt-on accessories that will let you tackle any subject that you fancy taking pictures of. But to get the best out of the Nikon camera system you do need to do more than simply point and shoot. Your D-series SLR will set most things for you automatically… but you will get better results if you take control of some of the settings, and explore the many menu options that you will find onboard. In this bumper guide we will show you the key controls you should get to grips with, teach you the key skills that you should learn, and inspire Video!’ e a ‘Watch Our Whenever you se the w you with lots of great ideas for al, tap it to vie badge on a tutori video guide. taking better pictures next time accompanying ks to the project lin lf se ur yo you head out with your Nikon. ail To em on the link at the files, simply click This comprehensive guide is the t evan bottom of the rel s ge pa al follow up to our best-selling tutori Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook – but there are is no need to have the original in order to get great instruction and advice from this Volume 2 edition. And remember, you not only get the great tutorials, features and reviews to read… We also throw in a selection of great video tutorials that will teach you how to get great results from your Nikon, and from the free editing software that Nikon supplies with it. Simply tap the ‘Watch Our Video!’ icons and they’ll pop up on your iPad screen!
watch our videos!
Chris George, editor
NIKOPEDIA
Double click to zoom
CAMERA SKILLS
Some of it may be obvious, but our tips will help you get more from your enhanced digital edition of The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook...
INTRODUCTION
three easy ways to make the most of your enhanced digital edition
NIKON SOFTWARE ESSENTIAL KIT
When zoomed in, drag to pan
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2014 The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook: Volume 2 3
INTRODUCTION CAMERA SKILLS
Volume 2e 2 Future Publishing Limited Quay House The Ambury Bath BA1 1UA www.futurenet.com Tel: +44 (0)1225 442244 Editor Operations Editor Design Disc Editors
Chris George Adam Waring Roddy LLewellyn Hollie Latham, Jeremy Ford
Future Publishing Limited Head of Photography Matt Pierce Group Editor in Chief Chris George Group Art Director Simon Middleweek Content & Marketing Director Nial Ferguson
Advertising
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Senior Sales Executive Tel: +44 (0)1225 442244 Sasha McGregor sasha.mcgregor@futurenet.com
PRINT & PRODUCTION Production Co-ordinator Marie Quilter marie.quilter@futurenet.com
LICENSING Senior Licensing and Syndication Manager Regina Erak regina.erak@futurenet.com Phone: + 44 (0)1225 442244 Fax: + 44 (0)1225 732275
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NIKON SOFTWARE
Printed in the UK by William Gibbons on behalf of Future. Distributed in the UK by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT. Phone: + 44 (0)20 7429 4000
Future is an award-winning international media group and leading digital business. We reach more than 49 million international consumers a month and create world-class content and advertising solutions for passionate consumers online, on tablet & smartphone and in print. Chief executive Zillah Byng-Maddick Non-executive chairman Peter Allen Group financial officer Richard Haley Tel: +44 (0) 1225 442244 www.futureplc.com All information contained in this magazine is for informational purposes only and is, to the best of our knowledge, correct at the time of going to press. Future Publishing Limited cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies that occur. Readers are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers direct with regard to pricing. Š Future Publishing Limited 2014. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher.
4 The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook: Volume 2 2014
INTRODUCTION CAMERA SKILLS NIKOPEDIA
Camera skills
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Master Nikon software 140 Import and organise.................................142 Colour correct...........................................144 Restore tonal detail.................................146 Edit in RAW................................................148 Create a video...........................................150 Share your best shots..............................152
CHAPTER FOUR
Essential kit
CHAPTER TWO
Nikopedia
CHAPTER THREE
88
How flash works........................................90 Full-frame explained................................. 94 What is ISO?...............................................98 Memory and formats...............................102
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Action lenses.............................................. 156 Memory cards............................................. 168 Fisheye lenses............................................ 178 Superzoom lenses...................................... 188 Macro lenses.............................................. 200 Full-frame SLRs...........................................212 2014 The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook: Volume 2 5
ESSENTIAL KIT
SLR college.................................................. 8 The ultimate Nikon checklist.................. 20 Focus on the big picture........................... 34 Control bright skies.................................. 38 Shoot sunsets successfully.....................40 Take it slow with seascapes....................44 Get rid of shadows.....................................48 Make your zoo shots natural....................50 Pet pictures made perfect....................... 54 Fill faces with flash................................... 58 What is Auto FP?....................................... 59 Make bounce flash easy...........................60 Perfect the strobist look.......................... 62 Take better photos in a day...................... 64 10 creative home projects........................ 76
How do I use the histogram?...................106 Live View explained..................................110 Custom Functions explained...................114 In-camera processing...............................118 How do movie modes work?................... 122 Release modes explained.......................126 Dial M for Manual!.....................................130 Power to the people!................................134
NIKON SOFTWARE
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION NIKOPEDIA
CAMERA SKILLS
Page 34
ESSENTIAL KIT
NIKON SOFTWARE
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Page 20 6 The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook: Volume 2 2014
CAMERA SKILLS NIKOPEDIA
Page 64
NIKON SOFTWARE
SLR college.................................................................8 The ultimate Nikon checklist........................ 20 Focus on the big picture...................................34 Control bright skies............................................ 38 Shoot sunsets successfully...........................40 Take it slow with seascapes...........................44 Get rid of shadows...............................................48 Make your zoo shots natural..........................50 Pet pictures made perfect.............................. 54 Fill faces with flash............................................. 56 What is Auto FP?.................................................. 59 Make bounce flash easy...................................60 Perfect the strobist look.................................. 62 Take better photos in a day.............................64 10 creative home projects............................... 76
INTRODUCTION
Nikon skills
ESSENTIAL KIT
Page 76
Page 48 2013 The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook 2014 The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook: Volume 2 77
INTRODUCTION CAMERA SKILLS
CAMERA SKILLS
ON THE DISC
ESSENTIAL KIT
NIKON SOFTWARE
NIKOPEDIA
grab your bag, you’re going to
Start learning how to use your new Nikon here! From autofocus to zooming, we’ll show you how to get the most from your camera hether you’ve just got a new Nikon D-SLR, or you feel your camera skills need a quick brush-up, you’ve come to the right place. We can show you how to get more from your Nikon in five easy lessons. You’ll learn more about how your camera works, and you’ll see the difference in your pictures from day one. Lesson one is all about exposure: how to make sure your camera gets it right and what to do about it when it doesn’t. In lesson two you will learn about shutter speeds, and how simple adjustments can
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change the look of your pictures and achieve some really creative effects. Lesson three looks at zoom lenses and what they do. They can help you shoot subjects further away, but there’s much more to zooms than that, as you’ll find out. In lesson four we explain ‘depth of field’ and how to control it. This is one of the big advantages of a digital SLR over other types of camera. And finally, in lesson five, we focus on… focusing! So stay the course in the SLR College to discover just what your Nikon D-SLR can do.
8 The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook: Volume 2 2014
CAMERA SKILLS
NIKOPEDIA
NIKON SOFTWARE
ESSENTIAL KIT
ON THE DISC
2014 The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook: Volume 2 9
INTRODUCTION
CAMERA SKILLS
Increasing the EV compensation lightens the picture
No compens ation
INTRODUCTION NIKOPEDIA
CAMERA SKILLS
CAMERA SKILLS
EV compensation
NIKON SOFTWARE
+2EV compensation
BASIC TECHNIQUES
EXPOSURE made easy
Your camera adjusts to the light automatically… but how?
e take pictures in a huge range of lighting conditions, from sunlight to candle-lit restaurants. The camera’s sensor needs exactly the right amount of light to capture a
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good image, which is why the camera needs to control its ‘exposure’ to light. There are three ways of doing this, which are shown in the box below. In practice, the ISO setting is usually chosen to suit the conditions,
The three key exposure settings
This is how the camera controls the light hitting the sensor
Speed
ON THE DISC
■ This is the quickest way to adjust the exposure. There are no complex settings – you press the +- button, then turn a dial.
How long?
■ This is how long the sensor’s exposed for. It’s usually in fractions of a second, but can be longer.
Aperture
How big a hole?
■ An adjustable diaphragm in the lens that’s used to alter the amount of light hitting the sensor.
ISO
How much boost?
■ In dim light, you can increase the ISO to ‘turn up the volume’, though the image quality suffers.
10 The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook: Volume 2 2014
and the exposure adjustments are then made using the shutter speed and lens aperture. The exposure is cumulative, so a longer exposure will give you the same effect as a wider lens aperture. This means that for any photograph there are usually several combinations of shutter speed and aperture settings, which will give you the correct exposure. We’ll look at the creative effects of adjusting your shutter speed and lens aperture in the following lessons. For simplicity, though, you can start with your Nikon’s P, or ‘program’, mode. Here, the camera measures the amount of light in the scene, then adjusts the settings automatically. Most of the time program mode works fine, but there are situations where the camera misinterprets the lighting, or doesn’t give you the result you were expecting. It’s because the
camera’s meter doesn’t understand what it’s measuring in the way you or I do, and can only make a guess at how we want the picture to look. For example, you’ll often run into problems when photographing intrinsically light-or dark-toned subjects, like a bride’s wedding dress or a coal-black locomotive. Silhouettes are another problem area. Modern metering systems are often programmed to assume you’ve made a mistake, so they increase the exposure in order to make the near side of your subject visible – not what you wanted! The great thing about digital cameras, however, is that you can see the results straight away on the screen on the back of your Nikon and change the settings if you need to. The examples in this lesson show you just what to watch out for, and how to fix it.
Spot metering ensures you get the right exposure
TAKE IT FURTHER
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Spot metering
PASM modes in detail
■ In P mode you can change the shutter speed and aperture combinations by turning the command dial.
Different modes suit different shooting situations Mat rix Met ering
How ISO works
NIKON SOFTWARE
■ This is a situation where the camera can get confused: a brightly-lit subject against a dark background. However, you can tell the camera where to take its light reading with ‘spot’ mode.
CHRIS’S TOP TIP
NIKOPEDIA
ikon’s popular SLRs have a dial on the top with a whole array of exposure modes. How do you choose which one to use? Full Auto mode (the green icon) does everything for you, even firing the flash if needed. Next, the ‘scene’ modes set the camera up specifically for portraits, landscapes and so on, but they don’t offer much control. The most interesting are the P, A, S, M modes. Here, you get much more control over the camera settings, but still without having to do everything yourself. These are the modes that enthusiasts and professional photographers use most often.
CAMERA SKILLS
BEST EXPOSURE Modes Which one should you use and why?
INTRODUCTION
CAMERA SKILLS
It’s like turning up the volume when the light gets low
ISO VALUES
WHEN TO USE IT
1 P (Program mode)
4 A (Aperture priority)
You choose the lens aperture and the camera sets the shutter speed. Good for depth of field effects (lesson 4).
3 S (Shutter priority)
4 M (Manual mode)
You set the shutter speed and the camera sets the aperture. Use it when you want to freeze action or create movement blur.
Here, you set the shutter speed and the lens aperture yourself. Useful when you want to fix exposure for a series of shots.
2014 The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook: Volume 2 11
ON THE DISC
The camera chooses the shutter speed and aperture automatically – ideal for quick-fire everyday photography.
ESSENTIAL KIT
ISO
■ ISO measures ISO 25600 the sensor’s Emergency use only! sensitivity to light, ISO 12800 and the great ISO 6400 advantage of digital is that you ISO 3200 Night/low light/indoors can change this ISO 1600 from one shot to the next, according ISO 800 to the conditions. ISO 400 Everyday shooting (Film had a fixed ISO 200 ISO, so you had to set the right one Best quality (in good ISO 100 from the start.) light or if using tripod) Increasing the ISO means you can use faster shutter speeds in poor light to avoid camera shake, but there is a penalty – the more you increase the ISO, the more digital ‘noise’ you see in the picture, so it’s a trade-off you have to balance quite carefully.
INTRODUCTION
Pan IT!
PANNING TIPS
■ Swing your body to keep your subject in the viewfinder, and try a shutter speed of 1/60 sec to start with – it takes practice!
NIKON SOFTWARE
NIKOPEDIA
CAMERA SKILLS
CAMERA SKILLS
Freeze IT!
BASIC TECHNIQUES
make sense of SHUTTER SPEED Learn to control it, and you can create a sense of movement in your pictures
he shutter speed is the length of time the camera’s sensor is exposed to the scene. It’s measured in fractions of a second, and for most daytime photography you’ll be
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BASIC SHUTTER SPEEDS
You can use the shutter speed to control movement blur
1/5 sec
ON THE DISC
shooting at speeds anywhere between 1/30 sec and 1/1000 sec. The shutter speed is one of the factors in getting the exposure right, but that’s not all it does. At high shutter speeds, anything moving is
BLURRED
■ At a shutter speed of 1/5 sec, our subject is completely blurred – every part of her body has moved.
1/30 SEC
PARTIAL BLUR
■ At a faster speed of 1/30 sec, our subject is mostly sharp, but her hands and feet show movement.
1/1000 SEC
FROZEN
■ With a shutter speed of 1/1000 sec, our subject is totally sharp, with no sense of movement.
12 The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook: Volume 2 2014
‘frozen’ in space. Camera movement is ‘frozen’ too, so there’s little risk of camera shake and blurred pictures. The faster your subject is moving, the higher the shutter speed you’ll need to stop it in its tracks. The picture of the leaping motorcycle, above, was taken at 1/1000 sec. However, pictures taken in this way can lack any sense of movement. It’s almost as if the motorcycle and its rider are hanging stationary in mid-air. You can create the feeling of action much more effectively with controlled blur, which is how the bigger picture alongside was taken. The shutter speed was much slower at just 1/50 sec, and the camera was moved to follow the speeding motorcycle as the shot was taken. The motorcycle is still quite sharp, but the background has become a streaky blur, which
emphasises the motorcycle’s breakneck speed. Lower shutter speeds do bring the risk of camera shake, which is a problem. If the camera moves during the exposure, the whole scene is blurred, and that’s not a good look. To avoid camera shake, make sure the shutter speed doesn’t drop too low. The table opposite will give you a guide. If the conditions are forcing the camera to use a slow shutter speed, increase the ISO setting or use a wider lens aperture. Better still, use a tripod! This will keep the camera still, whatever the shutter speed. You can take control of the shutter speed using the camera’s ‘S’, or shutter priority mode. You can now set the shutter speed manually with the command dial, but the camera will still set the correct exposure by adjusting the lens aperture itself.